life in the 21st century, personal technology, free agent nation, social web...

Writing

Apr 12, 2008

Hi folks. I just added my Twitter feed (the feed will always show my latest 5 posts) to the sidebar near the top of my page. For the most part, these are my 1-liner ideas as they occur to me. Some of ideas the I post on twitter may later appear in a blog post where I have plenty of room to do them justice.

One of the things that stops me from doing some blog posts is that the idea is either too short or too involved. Now I have a place to put my quick insights, opinions and finds.

Lately, I've been surfing the social web. These are the sites that take advantage of exciting social web and web 2.0 concepts like friends, groups, ratings and comments. The top one at the moment is Twitter. I like following the thoughts of smart and interesting people who are interested in some of the same things I am.

If you are going to use Twitter as an information source, all you need to do is find people whose thoughts and discoveries you want to follow. A good way to do that is to use TweetScan or Summize to find people who are engaged with some of the things you are.

If you just bought an iPhone, you'll probably want to search for the word iPhone. That sort of thing.

The second thing you can do with a Twitter account is to post your own thoughts and discoveries in 140 character blurbs. You can include URLs by typing or pasting them in.

You'll want a Twitter client if you get more serious about it just because then you have a more powerful tool at your disposal. I'm using and enjoying Twhirl on my Mac these days.

As far as what to post, the rule that unless you are only trying to communicate with close friends, don't post about the mundane things you are doing, is a good one. If you are going to watch or finished watching a movie and can add some interesting comment about it that's good. You can really post whatever you want. Maybe just type something in for now.

Later on, if you enjoy writing to an audience, you'll be thinking of them when you write and that will guide what to post. If you use Twitter professionally or want to build up your blog readership, this could start feeling like work. That's OK in those contexts, but otherwise, have fun with what you want to do and if something seems like a good share, share it.

This really wasn't meant to be an introduction to Twitter, but I wanted to explain what the Twitter posts are doing on my blog page and while writing, thought of a few tips for those of you who are interested in what Twitter is all about.

Feb 22, 2008

MegaPhone used to be iPhoneDrive. MegaPhone 1.5, from Ecamm Network, finally lets you edit notes. There is a large caveat which is that it seems to need to reboot your iPhone or touch every time you edit an individual note. That's pretty inconvenient should you need to edit lots of notes. Each time you edit a note, prepare to wait 30 seconds or so while your device reboots.

Editing notes and pasting content from your Mac does work and that's the main thing for now. One interesting little extra. As soon as you are done editing notes or adding them by dragging or by using the copy to iPod (or iPhone) command, you can eject your iPhone or touch and you've got your new and newly edited notes with you.

The content you paste in will retain its font, color and style information. This means you can see color and different fonts and such in your iPhone or iPod touch notes.

You can copy PDF, RTF, RTFD and Word documents in as individual notes. Graphics will not make it over, RTFD and PDFs convert to RTF minus any graphics. I'm good with that. Graphics would be nice but that's not essential.

Dec 09, 2006

I started writing in my Moleskine daily when I incorporated it into a daily package. A group of things I do together.

I live about two miles from downtown Mill Valley, California. A town of 14,000 people, 12 miles North of San Francisco. The heart of Mill Valley, is the Depot Bookstore & Cafe which opens onto a small town square.

The cafe is the best nearby place to sit and write. It seats about 50 people. That's about 40 more seats than you can squeeze into the local Peet's across the street. Peet's admittedly has better coffee, but the Depot's coffee is pretty good and the people-watching, cafe and comfortable seating makes it better for casual writing.

But I digress. The point is that this is a whole little downtown with quite a lot of character and only a modicum of cheesy touristy stuff. It's got its fair share of high-end touristy stuff, but hasn't succumbed to T-shirt stores. You would like it.

Luckily, the eggs and toast breakfast served at the Depot cafe works for me. I eat the toast dry (no jam even though they have great jam here) and ask for 1 slice rather than the default two slices to avoid temptation. You probably don't want to know, but I eat the toast with eggs -- combining the two which allows the eggs to serve as the topping on the toast and the toast to add a little variety to the eggs.

I love food and hate food shopping, prep and dishwashing, so an eggs, toast and coffee breakfast for $6.47 works as a daily habit. So, I walk all the way from my house or drive about six blocks and walk from there. Either way, I get at least two 20 minute walks. One going and one coming back.

The route I take is on Ethel Avenue which is up above the main drag - Miller Avenue - and in the trees and hills enough to make it easy to get some good exercise if you walk briskly on the downhill parts. The nature, including Redwoods along the way, is a major plus. And, hardly any cars drive on Ethel. It is really narrow so one car passing per walk would be above average.

The walking and breakfast combo would be great in and of itself. But, I add in a large ruled Moleskine notebook and daily entries to ratchet things up a notch. I date the entries something like: Dec 9 (1) Saturday. The parens around the 1 is really a circled 1 and I number the pages in an entry that way.

All my moleskine pages are numbered in spreads. One page number per spread of two pages. This hasn't really been of much use but sometimes I will refer to another entry and having a page number to refer to helps. Although, the date would also probably suffice. Whatever. I like having the page numbers just in case. I can see how far into the book I am.

Finally, what do I write? it varies. I have gotten into the habit of entering stock market index numbers, the crude oil price and value of the dollar. This might be a way to get into writing. It's easy. No thinking. And, I've found that the stock market's ups and downs affects my software sales, so it is of some interest. And the value of the dollar impacts foreign sales. It's fun. I usually read the business page while I'm there and those stats are available.

I also frequently enter short quotes or notes extracted from things I read in the papers there. The SF Chronicle is almost invariably available free. Sometimes you get a treat with the New York Times. I'll read a bit of that if there's something really good.

I also report on things I've done in the last 24 hours. Daily diary kinds of things but that's very short usually. The main goal of my writing is not to document my life, that's a secondary thing. I like to capture some of the highlights. Things of note. When traveling, I'll write more about what I've seen that day. Average days, I might write more about what work I've accomplished.

The big topics are (1) what do I need and/or want to do that day or soon, (2) my ideas and observations and (3) work ideas, observations, analyses which could be ideas on marketing my software or how to do something in software or a new feature I should add and (4) goals and wishes and possible future scenarios for my life.

My Moleskine is thus a thinking tool and way to keep my focus and advance my work (for pay and otherwise). It's almost like a listener. If you've ever wished you had two of you, this is one way to do it. I'm the reader/listener and the writer. Putting things down in writing lets me converse with myself I guess. It gives some distance. It's powerful.

As this post is getting quite long, I'll just say that on good days I write 6 to 8 pages and some days it is more like one. This writing-walking-breakfast thing is a major part of my life. It is wonderful. Perhaps if I didn't work at home it wouldn't be as desirable to get out somewhere everyday. Perhaps the conversational aspect of the writing wouldn't be so valuable.

I love it. It feels like a healthy and useful luxury and I hope I can always carve out a space in my schedule to do it. So far I've been doing it for close to a year and there's no end in sight.

Apr 25, 2006

I discovered Dan Price Saturday. It was beautiful day. I drove over to Stinson Beach to give my new car some exercise. I found this intimate little bookstore with tons of character - Stinson Beach Books. By their very nature, beach town bookstores are special places, so I had to go in.

Exploring, I found this little book called Radical Simplicity: Creating an Authentic Life. The cover got my attention but the inside pages were even better. It is chock full of Dan's wonderful original sketches with mostly hand-lettering. Beautiful book.

I started reading Radical Simplicity at the Sand Dollar Restaurant across the street from the bookstore. The burger I had there was scrumptious by the way. I read a good chunk of the book that afternoon and evening and finished it the next day. I was fascinated.

The writing and sketching are excellent but the most interesting thing is Dan and what he thinks and does. He is a passionate and quirky guy. He seems naturally compelled to do things way off and away from the norm. One thing he seriously wondered about was what it would be like to be an indian in the days when indians lived peacefully and in harmony with nature. Dan's story made me wonder about indians too.

Maybe I felt a little like Dan a long time ago when I first realized how modern industrialized civilization has really trashed the planet in a mere 100 years or so. And used up most of the fossil fuels too. It bothered me a lot then. I couldn't understand it.

Eventually I kind of hardened myself to it and decided it was *just the way things are* and I might as well enjoy the good parts of the trend. So I became a technology enthusiast. I still recycled and stuff like that but stayed far away from being an environmentalist.

Even still, I read Ecotopia when it came out and really liked it. Maybe it is the shadow side of my mind. Yeah. So Dan Price and his books worked on that side of my mind. And now I'm compelled to read everything the guy has written. Maybe not everything.

Unlike most of us, Dan Price has made some very tough choices to pursue his unique vision and live life the way he imagines it should be lived. He's definitely advocating living lightly on the land.

Dan has been on a quest. He's done a lot of traveling and a lot of building tiny alternative homes. He's lived in two tee-pees, lots of high-tech tents and some other little shelters that are perhaps best described as hobbit houses.

Dan's written two other books that I'm currently reading: How to Make a Journal of Your Life and Moonlight Chronicles. They are different and were written in 2000 and 2001 while Radical Simplicity was written in 2005. I like the most recent book best and the Moonlight Chronicles second best and How to Make a Journal third. He's getting better as he goes along. I hope this trend continues.

Dan also has written a series of zines over the years. Over 50 of them. He sells them on his website for $5 each. I'm very tempted to order a few. I'm sure I will. I'll get back to you about them once I've checked 'em out.

Dan is not a god or a guru. But, he's very honest and has taken an alternate path from mine. And I admire him for it. I am curious to see more of the details of that alternate life that I've so far passed by.

He was right. I'm really enjoying reading the book. Its required reading for anyone who wants vibrant access to the rich and meaningful world of journaling. The author, Alexandra Johnson is a writer and a good one.

One thing that draws me in is her great curiosity and fascination with the journals she collected as she researched the book. She brings the mystery and treasure hunt alive. I remember as a teenager reading Nancy Drew. I loved the parts where she would be up in an attic poking around for clues or something special.

It helps that Alexandra didn't start out the ideal journaler. At all. She struggled with journaling from age nine and well into her twenties before she finally found a way in. Try this:

The proof was incriminatingly kept in my own hand, entries dated as regularly as a prison lockup. The litany of daily life reads as flat as the lines that guided my ballpoint: “school; walked dog; dinner - mashed potatoes, frozen peas, baked meatloaf, ketchup bled into rim of Pyrex pan.” ... The most shaming are days where there's that single entry: “nothing.”...

At twenty-four, mine changed by reading others' diaries carefully. I began experimenting, imitating, stealing. From Virginia Woolf, I learned how to keep a pen moving, imitating her “haphazard gallop” to avoid self-censorship. From Anne Frank, I learned how to look for patterns in a diary with an eye for imagining large work

This book is chock full of stories and excerpts from journals. A great read if you want to learn more about this sort of thing. The extra added feature is that the book inevitably motivates me. Motivation is key here. And all the examples provide options and angles when facing that blank page.

Jan 28, 2006

Moleskines have been playing a big part in my limited discretionary time this month. I've been following the Moleskine community online and keep seeing interesting ideas and observations on writing, using moleskines, drawing, getting things done and more.

As far as I know, the moleskine notebooks are the best ones out there for my needs. I love that there's a really interesting community around it. That doesn't mean I think these things are perfect or that someone couldn't do better. But I'm hoping for all sorts of improvements and options. Modo & Modo are listening and the community is constantly mulling and talking about what works, the experience, add-ons and interesting new uses or possibilities. This is a mutually beneficial relationship that could produce more good things.

Moleskine is here now and it is hot. So, here's the latest. I've got several Moleskines strategically placed around my house, in my backpack and in my car. I bring one along with me either pocket or large 100% of the time if I possibly can. If I've got some spare time, I'll gather up a bunch of them and extract, compile, read and annotate them. Then, I need to return them to their proper places. Sometimes they don't make it back and end up in a pile. Of course, each can be labeled inside. But that isn't quite easy enough. I want the outside to tell me where it goes.

I put Brother labels on them such as *Living Room* and *Bedroom*. But that's not good enough. I want the icon, the graphical speech. So, I've added decorative elements to the fronts and backs. I used some of the Moleskine stickers and tried color coding but that wasn't enough. I started looking for stickers that would be worthy of these books -- my writing, my dreams, my hopes, my goals and notes. Most stickers are really childlike, cutesy things like smiley faces. That won't do.

Recently I found a set of 90 national flags that I've used. Some of these are great. But I really wanted to decorate my Moleskines with art stickers. So I have been looking around locally for them. I finally went to the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco and even they didn't have them.

Finally, I googled for *art stickers* as I had done a few months back with no success. This time I struck pay dirt with Dover Publications online store. Navigation could be better, but they've probably got 25 or 30 sticker sets. These are $1.50 for 16 stickers including Frida Kahlo, Rembrandt, Leonardo Da Vinci, Hopper, Classic Posters, Movie Posters, Kandinsky, Renoir, Egyptian Art, Chagall, Japanese Prints, Audubon, and Tiffany Stained Glass Windows.

As you may remember, I was given a set of stickers of the art of Frida Kahlo and used those on a couple of my Moleskines. And ever since I've been wanting stickers for other artists. So, once I found Dover, I ordered 16 of their sets and am in sticker heaven. I decided to dedicate a Moleskine to a particular artist and put stickers on the front, back and inside front and back. I put at least 8 of my favorites for an artist on the larger moleskines.

So far, I've got Kandinsky, Japanese Prints, Gauguin and Hopper. This is big fun. I'm thinking the extra benefit is the artistic inspiration value of the stickers for me and just the constant exposure to great art even if on a miniature scale. Each book will provide a different feeling and inspiration based on the art. Highly recommended.

There's more that I'm up to and thinking about on this topic. But that's for next time.

Jan 15, 2006

Tonight while browsing the web I found a blog called: The Wandering Novelist's Blog. The sub-title is: How Do You Write a Novel? I Guess I'm about to Find Out. This 22-year-old English chap decided on New Year's Eve to go for it and try to write a novel. Maybe I'm just a sucker for ne'er-do-wells but I find his 8 or so posts to be the beginning of an interesting story.

My second new blog favorite is PigPog | Creativity Anywhere. PigPog is a two-person blog whose authors are Michael and Sam. They are a couple and just this last week, Michael proposed and Sam accepted online. I know, now I'm really looking bad - I'm afraid I really look like a voyeur. Whatever, maybe that's normal human behavior - did you ever hear of People Magazine?

So, back to PigPog. The GTDers in my readership will probably recognize PigPog. Michael has written a lot about GTD including his very own PigPog Method. I enjoy the GTD posts as well as those on various writing and drawing implements. The honesty here is as close to 100% as I've seen. Oh, and Michael just recently quit his job and is trying to make enough money from blogging to avoid going back to a real job.

Can easily write at all angles. Best free-form drawing for simple stuff that doesn't have to look precise. Great capture device that way and also great for a quick sketch of something to show what you mean while talking with someone.

Improves your handwriting if you try.

Improves your drawing and sketching if you try.

Cheap in relatively small quantities which is what most people use.

Not intimidating - or at least not compared to PDA.

No learning curve.

Pocket in the back comes in handy.

Low maintenance. No batteries or outlet required!

Treo 650 - Great Pocket Computer with Phone Capabilities

A portable computer that is comfortable in your hand.

Stimulating, may cause eye fatigue compared to paper.

Digital means content can be transferred and repurposed without re-entry Can bring along a lot of reference material - but it is typically a bit of a hassle to get that stuff on there from your computer. Knowing what to bring and refreshing the content is an issue.

Can surf for information with things like Wikipedia, Web, RSS reader Handwriting recognition not so great.

Not as fast or comfortable to record information.

Delicate due to electrical nature - be careful about spilling on this or dropping it.

Extra functions like voice recording and camera are nice.

Substantial learning curve.

High maintenance, needs regular charging.

I carry both. My Treo is my cell phone, so I almost always need it with me. Sometimes I wish I had a small cell phone that was just good at being a phone, though. I think if I were a heavy phone user, I might use something that excelled as a phone. No QWERTY, no small numbers. I've yet to master using other functions while I'm on the phone because I don't want to interrupt the call. That's too bad.

Mobile Moleskines. Most of the time when I leave my home/office I have a large moleskine if I'm driving or a pocket moleskine if I'm on foot. If I am just walking in a loop and have no plans to go anywhere else, I bring my black Volant pocket Moleskine which is more comfortable in my pocket. I'm not expecting to write much and only occasionally do. Sometimes I limit myself to an index card for those loops. Depends on how long the loop is and what's handy that minute.

Treo. The Treo QWERTY is very nice in the occasional situation where I need to type out an email of any significant length and that happens at times. I like to check my email when I'm out because I randomly get big ticket software orders which I like to fulfill ASAP.

For all its fantastic modern swiss army knife features, my Treo doesn't inspire me to write. Although, there's one case that isn't true -- my web connection might provide me with stimulus to write. But just sitting there, it is inspiration neutral. If I need to record something and it is just a snippet, I type it in. I use it for: calling of course, looking up and recording phone numbers, writing down references such as books or movies I want to check out, reading the occasional ebook, reading RSS feeds, looking things up on Wikipedia or googling including using google maps to see where I am or to find something when I'm on the move. Lots of good stuff.

My Moleskines. Here's where a lot of my current writing is. It's an excellent, enjoyable tool for writing ideas and notes and drawings. And sketching if I were so inclined. Space and pockets are in short supply, so we tend to want to address multiple needs with the same tool, but if I had my way, I would just write in my moleskine. I would write about projects perhaps and write reminders, but I wouldn't convert my special writing object into a to do list or GTD machine. But, that's just me.

The Future. I'm hoping I won't have to choose. The Treo and its offspring will only get better. I guess when a PDA/Communicator starts feeling and looking like paper, the death knell of the moleskine and its offspring will sound. But meanwhile, I'll hunt for pocket space and enjoy the luxury of having both.

Jan 07, 2006

I've been especially enjoying my Moleskine notebooks lately. Maybe it is the holidays with that little bit of extra time for contemplation and writing. (No, this isn't my work. It's the dazzling work of Lisa Laughy at Ninth Wave Designs.)

I like reading moleskine stories, learning moleskine hacks and seeing what people are doing with them. Evidence of the Moleskine phenomenon is spread all over the Web, but places like moleskinerie, moleskinerie's flickr community, the moleskine squidoo pages (moleskinerie and moleskine resources) conveniently bring all this activity together where it's easy to observe.

Size Preferences. I have a strong preference for the large notebook over the pocket-sized version. It gives me room to create. My hand-writing isn't particularly small. To me, the large size moleskine notebook is a real prize. But, of course, I carry a pocket moleskine when I don't have room for a large one.

My Favorite Moleskineformat. This is a hard one. I've only gradually learned how much different the moleskines are from one another. The sketchbook, with its exquisitely thick and smooth 100 pages, is the Rolls-Royce in the Moleskine line. I've used my pocket and large sketchbooks occasionally, but often feel that I'm sullying the pages with inadequate writings and drawings. Even though I used to draw quite a bit as a child, as an adult, my drawing is confined to doodling and simple diagrams. The squared journal feels too busy, although it is handy for drawing neat diagrams. The simple, blank notebook is too free-form -- I like my lines to be straight. So, for me, the simple ruled notebook with its 240 pages is best. It represents a perfect compromise for writing notes and ideas.

Clairefontaine too. If I had never written in a Clairefontaine wirebound notebook, I would be totally satisfied with my ruled Moleskine. The frictionless Clairefontaine paper is bright white and not quite rustic enough to match the moleskine brand, but it sure is fun to write on! So, I have to confess that I also use Clairefontaine's large, vertical, wirebound note pads for my note-taking with clients.

Moleskine vs. Index Cardsand Books. I've found that I can read my moleskine rather than read a book when I have a few moments. This works especially well when I've already entered a fair bit of content into my skine. I have about seven or eight moleskines - pocket or large - circulating at any one time, so that's enough content to make the reading interesting. By alternating moleskines from time to time and quickly transferring urgent items to do lists and occasionally transferring content to my computer-based reference materials, it is stimulating and workable. And, of course, you can stick a few index cards in the back pocket for to do items, URLs and phone numbers.

Annotations and Additions. I like to bring four pens with me: black, blue and red 1.0 mm Uni-Ball Jet Stream plus a Bic yellow highlighter. This lets me annotate my moleskine entries or write new ones or improve organization by making entries to the table of contents pages. I find that my own previous ideas and notes often lead me to other thoughts. This way I further develop my thinking. The ability to annotate is a key advantage to paper and pen(cil). The red, blue and highlighter give me options. Writing notes in books while I read and annotating them is the same thing. It's just that here I'm furthering my own thinking and writing. That's what these books are all about.

Spreading the Love. It's tempting to dedicate whole moleskines to particular topics of importance like you might do with 3-ring binders. But, I've found that impractical. Too many moleskines to lug around. What does work is to have multiple books strategically located in places like (1) my home office desk, (2) my livingroom, (3) my nightstand, (4) my backpack, (5) the passenger seat in my car.

Pencils. Like I said earlier, I'm not an artist. At least not yet. Maybe never. But, I was readin' on the Net about drawing people and that sounded interesting. So, I did a little research on pencils. Wow! Once again, the Net has a lot to offer. Start at Pencil Revolution and go from there. The latest hot pencil seems to be the California Republic Palomino. At least, the aforementioned, Lisa Laughy, thinks so. From what I read, at least, these pencils might very well convert one from pen to pencil. They are available at the Pencil World Creativity Store on eBay and at Ninth Wave Designs.

Jun 20, 2005

I believe I've fallen from grace as far as coolness is concerned with this moleskine. But, this is the age of personalization and self-expression. Putting one of my Frida Kahlo stickers on this reporter made it fun. The painting shown is called The Little Hart.

If I had it to do over again, I might have preserved my dignity by putting only one sticker on without the extra moleskine stickers. But, alas, I received the stickers as a gift and wanted to use them. As someone who uses multiple moleskines of the same size, I need a way to tell them apart. Hence, stickers! This whole pack of 16 Dover Fine Art Stickers cost $1.50.

More discrete folks put stickers on the inside of their moleskines. But you could advertise your values and artistic preferences for all the world to see like I did. Come on, live a little!